The present invention relates generally to a method and system for manufacturing elastomeric articles and more specifically to a method and system for manufacturing a device having a plurality of elastomeric portions, one of which is a relatively thin nonplanar portion and the other of which is a relatively thick portion, such as the devices of the types described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,295,984 for collecting vaginal discharge and/or vaginal delivery of substances such as medication, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
The system may be used, for example, to produce a particular product whose relatively thick portion may be an elastomeric rim and whose relatively thin portion may be a nonplanar thin elastomeric reservoir. In manufacturing methods of the prior art, devices of this type may be injection molded in one piece. For some devices, however, injection molding is inappropriate because the reservoir component must be a very thin film. In order to achieve this thinness, the reservoir may be vacuum-formed from a sheet of elastomeric material. A common method of producing a device whose reservoir is a very thin film is simply to attach a pre-formed reservoir to a separately formed rim. However, the pre-formed reservoir is difficult to manage because the very thin elastomeric film is fragile, sticks to itself and fails to retain its shape after it has been vacuum-formed.